A Abstractmanggarai barat regency, designated as one of indonesia’s super prioritytourism destinations in 2019, requires adequate readiness to implementsustainable tourism principles in accordance with international standards. thisstudy aims to analyze the readiness of manggarai barat regency based on theglobal sustainable tourism council destination criteria version 2.0 through a gapassessment using a qualitative approach with content analysis methods. data werecollected through document reviews, in-depth interviews, and field observationsinvolving relevant stakeholders. the assessment was conducted across 174indicators using evidence-based scoring with a range of 1–3, which was convertedinto a readiness index. the results show that manggarai barat regency achieved areadiness index of 70.5%, categorized as moderately ready. the highestachievement was found in the socio-economic sustainability aspect (77.1%),followed by sustainable management (74.5%), environmental sustainability(66.7%), and cultural sustainability (64.1%). the main gaps were identified ingovernance, monitoring systems, risk management, conservation, and policyimplementation documentation. strengthening institutional capacity, stakeholdercoordination, and data-driven monitoring systems are key priorities to improvedestination readiness toward sustainable tourism.keywords: destination standards; gap assessment; global sustainabletourism council; sustainable tourism; west manggarai regency